Rolls Royce withdraws from Boom Supersonic program

After several years of R&D work, Rolls Royce has withdrawn from the Boom Supersonic program. Rolls has been working with Boom since 2020, working on developing an engine capable of mach 1.7 for the program. The withdrawal leaves GE and Pratt & Whitney as the most likely contenders to provide the engines. GE was developing a CFM56 based engine, dubbed Affinity, for Aerion before their collapse last year. Pratt has a JT8D-200 variant that was originally designed for Aerion, before they decided to work with GE.

Rolls cited changes in management, financial challenges from Covid, and costs of fixing the Trent 1000 for the 787 as reasons for pulling out of the program. Boom remains optimistic however, and expects to make an engine supplier announcement within the next few months. The XB-1 demonstrator is in ground testing, and should fly before the end of the year.

COLORADO SPRINGS – The list of potential engine providers to power Boom Supersonic’s Overture airliner project has narrowed following the decision by Rolls-Royce to withdraw from the Mach 1.7 project.

The U.K. engine maker had been partnered with Boom on propulsion studies for the supersonic airliner since mid-2020, but confirmation that these links have now ended comes as little surprise following recent comments by Chris Cholerton, president of civil aerospace for Rolls-Royce, who suggested there was little appetite to take the concept work forward into development.

Rolls-Royce’s withdrawal comes as the engine maker changes leadership and deals with the financial challenges from the COVID-19 market collapse, as well as recovering from the cost of fixing problems with the Trent 1000 on Boeing’s 787 fleet.

aviationweek.com...

Did the bid move the goal posts and demand flies faster than covid?

a reply to: Zaphod58

Thats sad to hear.
Do you think Rolls thought it was gonna go to an American company so withdrew?

a reply to: Kurokage

more like they have other irons in the fire some of which looks like it'll leave them out of sync with the US gov..

a reply to: Kurokage

No, it was theirs already. There’s just a lot going on right now at Rolls, and they’re trying to streamline.

Boom announces Symphony engine.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
Boom announces Symphony engine.

The Boom company describes the newly conceived Symphony supersonic engine as being intended to run on sustainable fuel, and because environmentalists had grave concerns about damage to the ozone layer by the nitrogen oxide gases formed by combustion in the fuels of the engines being developed for the Aerospatiale/British Aerospace Concorde, Tupolev Tu-144, and Boeing 2707, the Sierra Club and some other environmental groups potentially could welcome a notional SST that relies on environmental-friendly fuels for jet fuel. Boom was careful not to be naive to think that Pratt & Whitney or General Electric would start designing an engine for the Overture given those companies chief priorities in jet engine design, but also the cost of developing a new commercial supersonic engine. Despite being designed for supersonic flight, the Symphony will not be designed to use an afterburner, potentially making the Boom Overture the first SST design with non-afterburning engines to have secured airline orders.

Boom revealed more details:

newatlas.com...